If the ad breaks between consistently rubbish summer TV shows are anything to go by, music compilation CDs are this season’s must-have items. And, boy, are they getting the hard sell.

There’s another Bruce Springsteen compilation. Cat Stevens’ best of is, apparently, ‘one of the best compilations ever!’ The Very Best of Don Henley features Boys of Summer and, erm, you know, all his other best stuff…

I hate commercial compilation CDs (got to love homemade ones, though). In the digital age they are a redundant concept. Pre-digital, they did fill a need. Like a couple of songs by one particular artist, and keen to dip into the back catalogue without buying all the albums? Before the internet, would need to pick up a compilation CD (or, indeed, an LP or cassette). You’d accept that fact that there’d be a few tracks you didn’t like, and a few of your favourites would be missing, and the track order might be a bit annoying – because there was nothing you could do about it. Read more…

Music, Technology

This week’s Guardian Guide has a cover feature on how 1989 was a momentous year for music. Granted, the vast majority of the population was buying records by Jive Bunny and Jason Donovan, but, for those of us who were less easily pleased, 1989 offered a host of fantastic albums that can be looked back upon 20 years later as true classics.

The Stone Roses, Technique by New Order, Reading, Writing and Arithmetic by The Sundays, Doolittle by The Pixies, Bizarro by The Wedding Present, Paul’s Boutique by Beastie Boys, Three Feet High and Rising by De La Soul… The list goes on. Read more…

Music, Technology

Got an idea for a killer iPhone app? With more than 1bn applications sold since its launch last July, Apple’s iPhone App Store has become one of the fastest-growing tech enterprises in recent history, and gained a reputation as something of a developer’s goldmine. Success stories such as that of Ethan Nicholas, whose iShoot app has earned him $900,000 (£567,000) in eight months, have only added to the App Store’s appeal for would-be iPhone entrepreneurs…

Read the full story at The Guardian

Technology Guardian

Steven Patrick Morrissey is 50 today. Does that make you feel old? He’s no longer the wispy young lad in unbuttoned floral shirt and NHS specs, hearing aid in one ear, and gladioli in his back pocket. He’s a much ‘sturdier’ figure now, greying quiff, Italian styling, LA tan, but still unmistakably Morrissey, still Britain’s most fascinating pop star.

I remember clearly the day I first discovered The Smiths. I was about 12 years old, and in a music lesson at school. Music lessons back then consisted of a lazy teacher sticking a tape of classical music into a cassette deck and making us sit still for 45 minutes listening to it.

Fed up with this arrangement, one of the lads in my class secretly swapped the teacher’s classical tape for the Smiths album The Queen Is Dead. The lesson began, the teacher played the tape, and a curious sound emerged… Read more…

Music